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Comment by hiphopopotamus | Hacker News Reader

Grow up. Twitter doesn't owe you anything.

It's not about Twitter owing me, or anyone else for that matter, anything. If you release an API under the premise that developers are going to build apps that enhance and refine your existing service, then it is your responsibility to maintain a fair and open attitude towards them.

Responsibility is a strong word that is unwarranted. It would be nice for Twitter to continue to operate the API in an egalitarian and fair manner. They are under no responsibility to do anything.

But that's besides the point. The crux of it is:

Twitter took you all for a ride, and screwed you at the end. Your solution is to put together an online petition calling on the big bad man to see the light and do the right thing...?

You've got nothing on Twitter, they have no reason to listen to any of you. It's time to cut your losses, move on, and learn your lessons about building on closed platforms.

I agree that they have no reason to listen. In all likelihood, no single thing that any one person can do is going to get them to care at all. It's more about the collective voice and reiterating that you can't treat your developer community like crap.

Even if Twitter never listens, if this (or anything I write for that matter) causes anyone to think before they make a poor policy decision for their dev community, then I'd be a happy camper.

> "It's more about the collective voice and reiterating that you can't treat your developer community like crap."

But they can. The rode the 3rd party ecosystem all the way to the top, and now you're no longer needed. They can do whatever they want, which really sucks, and is kind of a dick thing to do, but even collectively you (plural, as in the whole of Twitter's dev base) have no sway over Twitter now.

I'm not condoning Twitter's actions, but IMO petitioning them when it's clear that this is the result of a major strategy shift, is just wasting your breath. It will aggravate you and be ultimately useless.

well Twitter certainly does not want Developers, to build successful apps using their API's. So the only way to solve this problem would be just, stop using their services.

You can't effectively say "they don't owe me anything" and say "they owe us a fair and open attitude" in the same sentence and expect to be taken seriously. They don't owe you anything. You don't pay them for anything. There's risk in piggy backing on another service. There always has been and always will be. This same reaction occurs every single time an API gets closed, changed, or altered in ways that developers don't like.

If anything, you provide a disservice to developers by invoking and promoting such a, pardon me but, whiny attitude towards something that should you should understand to be basic business.

Twitter does owe a fraction of its success to its developer ecosystem. By upsetting said ecosystem, they're hurting themselves.

I'm sorry but don't see what that has to do with the misplaced sense of personal entitlement.

It's not about entitlement so much as don't piss off the people who add value to your platform

I'm having a hard time viewing "responsibility to do something" and "owing someone something" as distinct ideas.

Actually, they do. Maybe not legally, but practically, Twitter owes many of its users to a handful of successful API clients. You can't just "use" developers (or, companies) to build up your user-base, and then as soon as it gets convenient for you, just ditch 'em all together...

> You can't just "use" developers

Actually, you can, they did, and any developers who thought they were entitled to anything from Twitter don't understand platform risk and learned a lesson.

At some point you start losing users who are affected by apps they use suddenly not working any more. If they care to find out why it makes a bad impression. If it happens multiple times they will think about switching to a rival service. There's virtually nothing keeping users on Twitter if a rival service popped up and their friends started moving there.

> There's virtually nothing keeping users on Twitter if a rival service popped up and their friends started moving there.

That's like saying, "There's virtually nothing keeping people on Earth if we develop cheap, reliable, faster-than-light space travel."

So you're saying creating a rival service to Twitter would be as hard as creating faster than light space travel?

All I'm talking about is gradual migrations like the ones from geocities and myspace. In the case of those services users had a lot of content they'd created that they had to leave behind. By it's ephemeral nature Twitter has very little of that.

No, I'm saying that the value of Twitter isn't the product itself, it's the people using it. I don't get on Twitter because of the allure of a 140-character-limited textbox. I get on Twitter because it's the only place I can receive regular personal updates from my idols, role-models, and colleagues, and even engage them in conversation. The more people on Twitter, the more valuable it becomes to me.

You can build a rival service if you want, but nobody will use it until it provides value, it won't provide value until people use it.

By that logic everybody would still be using Yahoo search

You're still missing the point. Search doesn't have lock-in via network effects. If all my friends use Yahoo search, it doesn't make my Yahoo search experience any better.

Then how about myspace?

MySpace was a thriving site with powerful network effects. However, Facebook was started just one month later, not years and years later. By contrast, attempts to dethrone Twitter come 6+ years after Twitter's founding.

Also, MySpace was a technical fiasco. (Although it wasn't quite as bad as Friendster, which was so slow it was unusable.) Facebook and Twitter are never going to allow pages to become painfully slow, have unreadable backgrounds, or blare music automatically.

Thirdly, Facebook's network effects were more powerful than MySpace's. Their school-based distribution strategy guaranteed that your relevant friends would be on the service. Features like "events" gave everyone a reason to join. And, ultimately, Facebook appeals to everyone age 4 to 100+. MySpace's main appeal was to music-loving teenagers. The more people you appeal to, the stronger the network effects.

Long-story short, it's not impossible to beat Twitter at its own game. But it's really, really fucking hard. It's not simply a matter of building a slightly better Twitter. Likely, Twitter would have to fuck up their basic user experience in a major way, AND you would have to devise an extremely superior user acquisition model.

Of course you can.

Just like the developers would ditch Twitter for the next big thing if it ever pulled a MySpace.

There was a mutually beneficial relationship that is no longer (as) beneficial to one of the parties.

To continue the analogy it would be as if George Washington agreed to become King instead of continuing the revolution and becoming president. Twitter promised to be a platform. A shining message bus on the hill. Twitter rejected the revolution and chose Kingship and monarchy. Are you surprised that people after laying down their time, their content, their development effort, and their dreams are a little pissed?

> Twitter promised to be a platform. A shining message bus on the hill.

Serious question: Ignoring that little bit of melodrama/hyperbole in the last sentence, is this true?

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